Scrapping, Metal Melting and Planning My Funeral!! Oh My!
Do you have a section of your property set aside for scrap metal? Right now I do. Since moving to the property in January of 2015 and beginning the renovation of the house we have accumulated a pretty good amount of scrap metal. Some of it I have used in other projects but there are some things that just will never be used for another project and is just lying around.
Most of the stuff I have came about as we renovated the house or from daily life. For example: there is a riding lawn mower, washing machine, dryer, 2 old grills, water heater, 2 cast iron bathtubs, cast iron waste pipe, an old boat trailer, and various other pieces of metal and old roofing scraps from the old barns here on the property. There are 3 or 4 truck loads that I need to take to the scrap yard. So many in our society would take these to the landfill but that is not in my nature. Metal can have endless uses and tomorrow that water heater could become a car door or microwave.
I also have an old aluminum fishing boat. As a younger man I used to love to fish. We had a little boat dock in Harlan on a small 350 acre mountain lake and it cost only $50 per month to put your boat there. It was full of pan fish, small mouth bass, and channel cats. I love catfishing. But as I have gotten older the allure of fishing just is not something I care to do, and boat dock fees have gotten ridiculous. The boys are grown and have no time for that stuff and I have so many other things that need more attention during the spring and summer months than I have time for already. Thus, my little boat has languished and to be usable will need considerable renovation. It is a 1983 aluminum bass tracker boat on a 16’ trailer. It has a 40hp mercury motor and front and aft trolling motors. All the wooden parts would have to be gutted out and replaced. I really wouldn’t trust the boat to be sea worthy anymore – at least not to sell it to anyone. I never want to be responsible for anybody getting hurt.
With all this in mind I am considering starting another hobby. I know I have so much to do on the homestead that I can’t get it all done. But, I would like to turn this scrap metal into something usable, or at least something valuable. Around here shred steal is going for about $180 per ton. That is 9 cents per pound. One of those old cast iron bathtubs would weigh at least 300 lbs. So, just the tubs are worth at least $27 each. A riding mower weighs in at about 500 lbs or at least $45. So there is a little value in the steel scrap. But for me it is a matter of time. In the winter months I have an abundance of time. The real time crunch for me starts about March and ends by the end of November.
Inside of every appliance there are motors, wires, zinc and aluminum parts. Aluminum unlike steel, which is 9 cents per pound, is 45 cents per pound. Brass is $2, Copper $3.30, Zinc 45 cents, etc. In the winter I could have indoor time to take these things apart and get the more valuable metals out and then take the steel to sell. I bet there is at least 700 lbs worth of aluminum on my old boat. My mind is racing about what I could do with this stuff. I know I don’t have enough to amount to much but I could in the winter months collect scrap from other folks and strip and haul off. We have a lot of people now that do that stuff around here. I think the local larger towns have ordinances that you can’t just ride around and do that in the garbage. So it would have to be planned out.
I love watching a couple of youtube channels. One is called the Scrap and Pallet Man. His name is Paul and he drives around in DeKalb Indiana and picks scrap metal out of the garbage, that people set out, and sells it to the scrap yard. He talks a lot and philosophizes about a lot of life stuff. I don’t know why but I love watching his channel. The other is called Bigstackd. It is a guy in Australia that has one of those metal melting foundries that you can buy for under $300 and he melts and pours copper, brass, and aluminum into ingots, medallions, and other shapes. He never says a word and calls it ASMR. He takes apart scrap stuff and gets the meltable metals out and gives the left over steel scraps and plastics to a friend to recycle. I would like to merge the two channels and collect scrap and turn it into stuff. It is a crafty kind of thing that I think will appeal to my little brain.
Now as I have gotten older I think a lot about what I am going to do as I get older and older. Right now I am well capable of running a homestead and doing the things we do here at College Hill Farm. But eventually I am going to kick the bucket. Don’t get me wrong I have plenty of life insurance. I am probably worth more to Crystal and the kids dead than alive, in a monetary sense. But, I think it would be cool if I could take a hobby and turn it into a savings account say to buy a headstone or to pay for a funeral. I really don’t want to have a funeral as far as that goes. I would be just fine with being taken out to my favorite hunting spot (the water rock) and be laid out and let the foxes, raccoons, opossums and buzzards have at me. But you just can’t do that stuff anymore so I will just take my last chance at a smoking hot body and be cremated and dropped in our family plot.
It would be cool if I created enough of a store of copper, brass, bronze, and aluminum to pay for just that. Making it into ingots would also be a way to store it in such a fashion as to make it so that it wouldn’t take up too much space. Now I know that melting aluminum and other metals would not be the thing fiscally if it was to be sold at scrap prices. Fiscally it would not make sense. But, that doesn’t mean I couldn’t turn it into things that could be sold at craft fairs, or as melting metals for other crafters. Even if sold at scrap prices if I could just turn time into money at my own pace even if I lose a little that would be a win because of the relaxation effect, much like fishing, but hopefully not that dang expensive.
Let me know what you think. Would that be something you would like to see on the channel along with the homesteading and prepping content. I actually think that may be a considerable addition to the prepping part of the channel. I will post this on our Facebook, Youtube, and Blogspot channels. Feel Free to comment and let me know what you think. It is not like I am asking for permission. But, many people have superior experience with this kind of stuff and I value opinions with real experience, not just Google experts. Either way I think it is something that I would like to do during the winter.
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Really enjoyed reading this. Only about 20 miles south of you, I haul to jaspers. Better to make 4 or 8 dollars on a small haul than pay 35 to dump in a landfill. I watch the same channels you mentioned and have for years. I’ve mostly abandoned YouTube because of my differences with them. I also looked at the crucibles and foundry stuff. I’m keeping all my copper to ingot, keeping two galvanized 31 gallon trash cans for crushed cans. Aluminum cans 35c a pound I think right now down this way.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. I think I would like it as a hobby.
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